"Did the Democrats actually want any of these amendments actually to pass?

The previous Administration and legislature left us with a structural deficit. How do you think that happened? Of course they wanted them to pass, though they may not have had much hope that they would.

All this yakety-yak about spending, borrowing, and debt limits bugs me.

What it comes down to is that we need to cut the damn programs - number and scope - there just is not enough tax money in the world to pay for all these wonderful things the "liberals" want to establish for us, besides that the agency staffs necessary to manage these programs are withdrawn from the productive economy and themselves need to paid with tax money.

I look forward to the next budget where I fully expect there to be an actual cut in the amount of money spent by the State of Wisconsin. The governor went after the fruit on the ground in this last budget. The low-hanging fruit is next. We need to get our state and local spending down, and therefore our taxes, so we can simply thread water for the massive federal tax hikes that will come in the next 10 years.

Because the burden of paying back the debt you advocate for incurring would never ultimately fall on the middle class and poor, right?

There's a magical fantasy world with enough rich people to fund every single social program that you want. You can tax them into oblivion without adversely affecting the economy and hurting the job opportunities for the poor.

You can also do this without the wealthy deciding to declare their primary residence in a no-income state like Texas while declaring their home in Wisconsin as a 2nd home just like all the other states that passed "millionaire taxes" only to watch those millionaires flee the state.

End result everywhere EXCEPT in your fantasy world? Now Wisconsin loses the revenue that they were alerady getting and instead get NOTHING and the taxes have to be raised on the poor and middle class to make up for it.

But in your world Democrats and Obama ride unicorns that defecate Skittles while you eagerly gobble them up because you think they taste delicious.

What burden do the poor carry? How would hiring more government workers alleviated the strain?" The Man. Keeping them down. And nothing eases the strain of the Man keeping one down more than lots of free shit.

Yes, the MacIver Institute would need to go through a big comprehensive analysis to reach that conclusion. The MacGyver institute, now, could have done it starting with just a single number and a few bits of wire.